Fall Garden

Fall is here

Fall Garden

Carrot Flowering

Pea Flower

Pea Pod

Tomato and Jalepeno

Fall has reached eastern NC. I have not forgotten about posting. I have not forgotten about gardening. With three toddlers, homeschooling, making food from scratch, no babysitters, cleaning house, ect. ect. I end up having to choose what gets my utmost priority which is the kids.
Yesterday, we finished repotting all of our banana and citrus trees. The kids had a blast. Just hoping we didn't wait too long. :/ It is hard to find the potting soil for the citrus plants so they didn't get any soil in spring and they suffered greatly. They are all yellow and did not bear fruit for the first time in three years.
Back to the Fall Garden. Not sure if I planted the pumpkin seeds to late or too early. Either way the pumpkin seeds grew beautifully right before a gulley washer of a week rained them out. They turned yellow and died. I thought for sure the rains had destroyed all the lettuce and kale I had planted, but they survived. The spinach, broccoli, and cabbage did not survive.
The other night it got down to the 30s which destroyed the greenest tomato plants I have ever seen. The Tomato plants were planted from seed and finally took off. They were vibrant, lots of leaves, fruit, ect,  even a caterpillar pillaged one, but it took them all summer to take off from seed so the above picture is all I got after the frost. I'm going to harvest the seeds and try planting them in pots this spring since they did so well. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what kind they were.
The peas as usual are flourishing. Peas seem to be the only crop I can consistently grow. Beginning to think it has something to do with my soil prep since I make my own soil so to speak.
That wraps it up for fall. We had over 3 lbs of carrots.....from what I can tell they are simply a root that continues to grow. When you get into the different kinds of carrots it basically is referring to how soon you can pick them and they have flavor and size when you pick them. My petite carrots left for a year in the ground have turned into monstrosities. Gorgeous even with a ton of caterpillars eating them stems last months they continued to produce stems and some even budded. Just have to learn how to harvest their seeds now!

Fennel Companions

• potatoes
• tomatoes

Middle of Summer garden

This summer garden was a mixture of successes and failures. The basil turned out beautiful and I was able to dry out enough to fill my Sams jar! The key to basil is constant harvesting. The more often you harvest, the bigger the plant grows.
We harvested quite a few cucumbers. I learned, although cucumber may be green one day, you must fertilize and tend to these plants on a weekly basis.
The one Zucchini grew beautifully! We were able to harvest over 6 off of the one plant.
I planted the tomato plants so many times, I have lost count. They do not appreciate NC summers. The heat, rain, humidity fluctuates to much for them. I will try next year to start them indoors and transfer them outside.
I have yet to harvest any bell pepper. Pepper plants need to be planted in the middle of summer or started indoors because they love warmth.
Onions
That is all I can think of. I know I planted a few more plants, but they were either unsuccessful or escape my memory at the moment.

Dill, Bouquet Companions

• asparagus
• broccoli
• brussels sprouts
• cabbage
• cauliflower
• kohlrabi
• chervil
• corn
• cucumber
• lettuce
• onion

Zucchini, Cucumber, and Honey Dew. OH MY!

Cucumber flower

Zucchini Flower

Honey Dew and Cucumber

Zucchini

These three plants have many similarities in look at least.You may remember back in July I had a hard time telling the plants apart. Once the leaves grew larger, their shape was easier to distinguish, but I soon discovered they all grew yellow flowers, as seen in the pictures above.
Aside from the Honeydew, the veggies are similar in color as well. Out of the 20 zucchini only one plant provided us with produce. The Cucumbers were doing amazing, but got drenched by the summer rains. They require a lot of fertilizer and spray from bugs. Out of the three honeydew plants we got two honeydew.
Overall I believe it wasn't a bad result for my first try.

August 23, 2014

My SD is broken, so phone pictures will have to suffice for now. This mornings planting.

Fall Planting Schedule

Those of you who follow my blog regularly know I am planting according to the lunar cycle this year. Here are this month's dates:

Aug 11-25 Waning Moon = Below ground plants
Aug 26-Sept 9 Waxing Moon = Above ground plants

Plants for this month's planting:
carrots
onions
beets
peas
pumpkins
celery
lettuce
spinach
kale

My SD on my camera bit the dust, so there will not be regular posting of pictures at the moment. For the time being my posts will be sporadic and reflective mostly. I am hoping to summarize this year during the winter months.

Fall Plans

Fall in the Garden

My favorite time of year in the garden is fast approaching. Let me clarify. My favorite time of year is Summer, but when it comes to gardening it is fall. I find it easiest to plan and create my structures when everything is dying away and it is still decent temperatures outside.

I have huge plans as always for my yard. We'll see how much gets accomplished. First off the list of general chores I have during fall:

1. collect grass clippings (over 40 trash bags this year)
2. collect mowed leaves
3. collect burnt wood ashes (need to clean the firepit out first!)
4. collect pine needles (I wish we had more pine trees)
5. continue collecting chicken manure
6. continue collecting vegetables and fruit
7. continue collecting cardboard
8. collect coffee grounds
9. buy a huge bucket of epsom salt

These are the materials my lasagna layers consists of . My ultimate dream is to have a worm "farm", but we haven't quite achieved that step.

For the yard my plans are:

• add a new garden bed
• mulch all the fruit, nut, and flower trees
• mulch the bushes
• weed the front bed
• transplant and thin out the irises and cana lillies
• clean out the chicken coops
• design herb garden beds

Hopefully by fall I will have successfully propagated a few gardenia and blueberry bushes as well!

Cucumbers

Marketer  Cucumber

Marketer Cucumber

Dill Cucumber

These pictures make me sad. This was the last time the plant was healthy. They ended up dying off before I could harvest many. Cucumbers require a lot of fertilizer. They loved the soil I planted them in due to the fact that the chicken manure was at the bottom of the compost pile, but alas the rain!!!! This time of year the rain we receive from the costal hurricanes dumps right on our location. We have the greenest grass in the region, but it also bodes ill for our corn and cucumbers.

I have yet to figure a way to keep these plants well fertilized and healthy during these rain storms. They don't have time to dry out. For this fact, bugs, mold, washed away fertilizer, and lack of sun was the demise of these beauties.

Basil Results

Basil

I can add Basil to my meager list of plants I grow successfully. So far, the easiest crops for me here in NC are:

• Peas
• Beans
• Basil

Quite a small list, but at least it is better than no list! Basil is great companion for many plants in the garden. From experience, I can tell you to pick off that big leaves. This is key to getting a big plant. Basil likes to be pruned continually.
The leaves you pinch off can be dried and stored for spicing up your pizza sauces and such. I love sweet basil because it has such an aromatic smell to it.

Summer blooms

Bee collecting pollen

Pea seedlings

This post was drafted June 15th. From this knowledge, I will say peas are ready to harvest for seeds by the end of the summer. Harvesting pea seeds is pretty simple. Once the pod begins to yellow, you can pull the pod up and hang it upside down to dry. The pod will become brittle like dried out paper. You can pop open the dried pod and discover the above seeds inside all wrinkled because they are ready to be planted once again. This is when you can store them in a dry place for future planting.

Summer Garden

Marigold

Pepper plant

These were taken May 29th, and all I have to say is the end of May is waaaayyyy too early for peppers!!!! Patience is the key when it comes to peppers around here. It was too cold for the peppers and the weather to unpredictable.
I ended up planting this garden bed twice because the first planting came up due to the warm weather I planted them in only to wilt. These plants like weather that is above 80 from my experience this spring!

June 14, 2014

Yesterday was the last day to plant by the lunar cycle for summer. The dates were roughly, May 30 - June 14. I kept putting it off, but late last evening went ahead and weeded the garden before planting. I replanted most of garden bed 6 as last month's planting turned out to be too cold for the seeds. Note to NC gardeners. Plant your peppers and hot weather seeds in summer or as close to the beginning of summer as possible. The ground and weather here is simply to cold for them to successfully germinate before summer.
I ended up planting some pole beans as well. We will see how successful they are.

Blog posts and Harvesting Lettuce Seeds

A short note on blog posts is in order. I have not forgotten to post. The next few days there will be a ton of posts from spring and summer on here. It's hard to believe it is time to prep for the fall garden almost. For my fourth year of NC planting, I must say I've been more successful. Still a lot of mishaps, disappointments, and triumphs, but I am happy with everything I have learned.

I did want to write what I did today though. I immediately fell in love with harvesting lettuce seeds, when I learned how. To me, the experience was like finding a wonderful surprise, uncovering a puzzle....not sure how to describe it. As below, you see the plant bloom in yellow flowers, much like a dandelion does. These petals will fall off leaving a white fuzz, much like a dandelion once again. It is with this flower fuzz that you find the seeds.

• Pinch off the white, fuzz of flower with it's stem.
• Carefully  pinch off the stem along with the bottom part of the flower.
• As you pinch from the bottom of the flower, you will discover the seeds fall from the white fuzz

Lettuce in bloom

harvesting lettuce seeds

Inside the floral pod

Zuchini, Cucumber, HoneyDew

Cucumber

Honey Dew

This post was meant to be published back in the early spring, as are many of these posts, :/ Initially, when my zucchini, cucumber, and honey dew were planted I could not tell them apart. They all come up fairly quickly. They all sport a cluster of large leaves. Their leaves all look green, large, and corrugated. Upon closer look, you can differentiate each plant by the shape of their leaves.

Cucumber has a heart shape to their leaves, so to speak. They have sharp points.

Honey Dew, on the other hand, have more of a ruffled look to their shape. They offer many sharp points, instead of one main point.

Zucchini eventually crop up into long stems. I will admit though, they are a bit confusing when they first produce their leaves.

Zucchini

Carrot Harvesting

Lettuce Head

Carrots enjoy well drained soil! As the soil temperature warmed up the carrots sprouted. They took quite a bit of time because I planted them too early.When carrots are ready, their tops push through the top of the soil. You see this carrot top is slightly green. When the carrot top is orange in  contrast to its green leaves, it is ready to pull.
I tried cutting off the tops an inch below the leaves and replanting the tops, but I was unsuccessful. Instead, I left a few carrots in the ground as it takes two years for carrots to produce their seeds.So far the heat of summer has not bothered them a bit.

Harvesting Lettuce

Romaine Lettuce

I read the trick was to pick them first thing in the morning before the heat of the day wilts them. This is true. I picked them from the stem and stuck them in a bowl of ice water. They last a week at room temperature in the early spring. As the house warmed up they would wilt inside at around 75 degrees, after two days.

I tried uprooting a plant and sticking it in a glass of water inside.....not sure if the vent dried out the leaves or what, but it did not work for me.
The romaine lettuce survived through 90 degree weather, surprisingly.I covered the lettuce in six inches deep worth of wood shavings and the heat did not bother this plant. The romaine was also planted on the shaded side of the garden where it only received 4 hours of direct sunlight from 10 am to 2 pm.

Summer Blooms

Blueberry Bush

Celery Blooms

Summer is simply my favorite time of year! In NC there is no exception. To me, it seems summers in NC are the season of fruity treats. Once again, my plums did not survive. The blueberries become ripe the end of June throughout April. The flower from the celery plant is just now dying off. The flowers beneath the climbing roses are in full glory.

Banana Plant Mutilation

My kids have mutilated my deck plants so many times by now it is not even funny! We brought these plants in during May when the nights would dip below 60s. One Sunday afternoon, we came out to the living room to a sight of a banana tree shredded to bits.
I about cried. It takes this plant 3 years to produce bananas. We have YET to have a plant make it to that third year. The longest we have kept one from being frost bit or mutilated by the kids is two years. I will say, they self propagate very easily!
Simply expose some of a bananas root and it will produce another plant. We are almost up to 11 plants this year. So far the one original plant we have bought produces 11 plants. of those 11, a handful survived our elements. From those 3 that survived we have had many more. Now if one could survive until its harvest!

Magnolia Update

I added rotten tomatoes and covered it with pine wood chips. As the spring rain, summer hurricanes, and warm weather has come, the magnolia ended up blossoming well. Most of the bottom leaves turned a deep green.
Our Magnolia looks great. I will try to cover it with mulch this fall. See if that keeps the branches from dying if it is a cold winter again.

End of Spring garden

Spring Harvest

This spring garden turned out decent. The lettuce surprised us and produced to the very end of spring! I will note that although, the lettuce has not bolted it taste bitter. I believe temperature has some control over the taste of lettuce.
 We harvested quite a few carrots. I learned that although the idea of a cutting an inch off the top of the carrot to replant, is a nice idea they wilted for me. Instead, I kept a few carrots in the ground to harvest their seeds next year, hopefully.
Peas grew beautifully! 60 plants is still not enough for a family of five. I will plant another variety this spring. I was able to harvest two quarts and over 20 seedlings. They even tried to produce a second time! The problem with peas in the summer in NC is that the humidity rots the pods before they finish developing.
I planted the celery too late or they only grow around here during the fall. I am not sure. I just know they bolted well before they were ready due to the heat.
Onions are still growing beautifully. I'm beginning to think they take over a year to grow. I will say you do have to continue to had dirt as they grow because they enjoy pushing through the top.

That is all I can think of. I know I planted a few more plants, but they were either unsuccessful or escape my memory at the moment.